Graduate Certificates

Learn the technical and collaboration skills necessary to become a vital leader in creating long-term solutions for today’s complex social and environmental challenges.

These advanced-level graduate certificates can be completed in nine to 12 months. If you have a bachelor’s degree with solid experience in your field or a master’s degree, these graduate-level certificates can give you an added career advantage, offer opportunities for networking, and provide an easy way to see if graduate school is what you’d like to pursue.

Graduate Certificate Programs

Convenient Classes

Classes meet for one extended weekend a month, so you can continue to work while earning your graduate certificate. You take six courses for a total of 18 credits and complete the program in nine months to 12 months.

For gainful employment information, click the following certificate links:

Graduate Certificate Program Descriptions

 

Business Leadership and Change Management  

(not currently enrolling new students)

Learn the business and people skills necessary to lead and manage change in your business or organization. Recommended for mid-level managers.

Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits

Choose three of the following courses and complete three electives:

  • Managerial Finance and Accounting
  • Socially Responsible Marketing
  • Strategic Thinking and Planning
  • Leadership in Business and Organizational Systems

 

Ecological Planning and Design   APPLY

Become skilled at creating sustainable solutions for today’s environmental and social problems. Recommended for natural resource managers, land use and urban planners, policy analysts, environmental consultants, ecological designers and those who work for nonprofits.

Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits

Choose three of the following courses and complete three electives:

  • Theories and Practices of Social-environmental Change
  • Integrative Environmental Science
  • Economics and the Environment
  • Environmental Policy and Decision-making Processes

 

Effective Communication Strategies  

(not currently enrolling new students)

Learn how to design and implement communication strategies that advance creative social change in organizations, communities and society at large. Recommended for journalists, writers, filmmakers, media strategists, communications consultants, community leaders, and social-change advocates.

Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits

Choose three of the following courses and complete three electives:

  • Communication Media
  • Communicating Across Cultures
  • Media for Social Change
  • Participatory Communication for Social Change

 

Integrated Skills for Sustainable Change   APPLY

Strengthen your ability to lead sustainable change in your organization, business, or community. Recommended for managers, consultants, community leaders, and others who want to learn about collaborative and systemic approaches to change.

Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits

  • Communication Design
  • Critical Inquiry
  • Global Pluralism
  • Systemic Thinking for a Changing World
  • Transformative Leadership and Change
  • Sustainability

 

Organizational Dynamics   APPLY

Learn how to use psychological principles to understand and change organizations. Recommended for professionals who work in human resources, organizational development, labor relations, training and executive coaching.

Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits

Choose three of the following courses and complete three electives:

  • Practitioner Development
  • Group Dynamics and Facilitation
  • Intervening in a System
  • Overview of Organizational Dynamics

 

Sustainable Food Systems and Permaculture Design   APPLY

Develop a solid understanding of the social, ecological and political issues of food systems—from soil to plate—and acquire tangible skills to help you design and implement sustainable changes in these systems. Recommended for people working in organic farming, permaculture, ecological agriculture, urban and rural sustainability, community supported agriculture, and food services.

Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits

Complete the following courses and two electives:

  • Theories and Practices of Social-environmental Change
  • Food Systems and Their Alternatives
  • Political Ecology of Eating and Consumption
  • Permaculture and Sustainable Systems Design

 

Systems Thinking and Design   APPLY

Explore the links among things that seem unconnected and then use this holistic understanding to design new and elegant systems to solve the problems of the 21st century. Recommended for big-picture thinkers in businesses, nonprofits, government departments, social service agencies, and other types of organizations.

Six Courses/18 Graduate Credits

Complete the following courses and two electives:

  • Systemic Approach to Leadership
  • Design for Social Innovation
  • Structures of Meaning: Distinctions, Intentions and Outcomes
  • Systemic Change and Persistence

If you want to create sustainable change in your workplace, your community, and the world, consider a graduate certificate in the Center for Creative Change.